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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108-page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/paperback book “Blackbirds, Lyrebirds, WeaverBirds” cc&d, v340, the 12/23 issue Order the 6"x9" paperback book: 
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Third Grade Melodrama
Bill Tope
Eight-year-old Stanley walked up the concrete path leading to his elementary school, where he was a student in the third grade. It was October and the air was chilly in the mornings, but Stanley could still taste the cocoa his mother had prepared for him at breakfast. He opened the glass and metal door and passed inside, making his way through the newly-installed metal detector, which, said Stanley’s father, had probably saved lives already. Last August, at the beginning of the school year, a fourth grader tried to smuggle his father’s pistol into the school but was caught by the guard. The school board felt that the magnetometer was a necessary precaution.
Stanley passed the ever-present guard, who smiled a greeting at the third grader. Stanley could smell the man’s aftershave. “Be safe, young man,” said the man. He said that every day. Stanley didn’t reply, being sensitive about how he spoke. Two months ago, the gun had upset the parents, and the guard was more vigilant than ever. In Stanley’s class, they did shooter drills each Monday; they made Stanley and many of the other kids edgy, but they were mandatory. He was late for school today—again. He sighed.
“School isn’t like it used to be,” Stanley’s father had said to the school board. “You’ve got bullying and isolation and alienation, and now guns. I don’t know how your children can even survive today.” Stanley’s father worked for a security company and had advised the school on the installation of surveillance cameras, safe rooms, and the metal detector. He wanted his son to grow up and follow in his footsteps, so he taught Stanley about security.
Padding down the deserted corridor, Stanley came to his classroom and passed inside. He could smell the white paste they kept in gallon jars on the shelf along the window sill. As he passed the pencil sharpener, attached to the wall at the front of the room, he could also smell the pencil shavings. Stanley was greeted by catcalls from the class bully and was told by his teacher to take a seat because he was late. Ms. Flory didn’t seem to like him. She was a hard grader and talked down to him and most of the other boys. He frowned. He didn’t like Ms. Flory right back. She made him read aloud, even though she knew he stammered. She and the other students seemed to find his speech impediment amusing. At the front of the room, near the teacher’s desk, the bully’s voice droned on. It gave Stanley a headache.
Stanley plunked his book bag down beside his desk, unzipped it, and reached inside. “For being late, Stanley,” said Ms. Flory, “you can just begin reading aloud the first chapter of ‘James and the Giant Peach,’ a book that the school board was considering banning because it was politically incorrect, unAmerican, and sexually suggestive. The other children snickered, eager to hear him stammer again.
Instead of pulling “James and the Giant Peach” from his book bag, Stanley extracted the plastic gun he had made with his father’s 3-D printer that morning and filled it with hard plastic bullets; he pointed it at the front of the classroom. There was a sea change in the disposition of the students and the teacher. No one was laughing at him now.
